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From: keithe@tekgvs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Hygiene for Disk Drives (or Dos Floss ?)
Message-ID: <2190@tekgvs.TEK.COM>
Date: Tue, 31-Mar-87 12:11:22 EST
Article-I.D.: tekgvs.2190
Posted: Tue Mar 31 12:11:22 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Apr-87 06:49:09 EST
References: <3489@cbosgd.ATT.COM> <652@dragon.tc.fluke.COM>
Reply-To: keithe@tekgvs.UUCP (Keith Ericson)
Distribution: na
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 48

Sorry, but I can't let this one go by without comment (but read the last
paragraph before you hit the F or R key, ok?):

In article <652@dragon.tc.fluke.COM> kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) writes:
>[stuff comparing data storage of apple, commodore, ibm and amiga].
>...More tracks per inch, more bits per track.  You just can't
>abuse an amiga disk like an apple II.  Nobody puts more data on a disk than
>amiga.  You don't have the comfort of the same huge margins you had on the
>apple II.  You are going to have to get used to some things, like buying
>expensive brand name disks.
OK - that seems fair.

>...Like cleaning your drive if you use it all the time.
Likewise, a little maintenance goes a long way (but tends to get
forgotten, like backing up hard disk drives, eh?)

>...Like having occasional failures from old disks.
Absolutely unacceptable!

>...Like having your drive aligned every year or two.
Maybe, maybe not. What ever happened to quality construction?

>...These things are nothing new, and they
>cannot be blamed (completely) on the DOS from Hell.  Welcome to the world of
>professional-quality systems.  Welcome to the state of the art.
If this is state of the art then the artists need drawing lessons! And
professional-quality systems?! Home-brewed systems, lashed together with
CK722's, 2N109's and parts from the Country Store maybe, but not from
an alleged electronics manufacturer with its corporate reputation at
stake. If my digital voltmeter started reading AC when I pushed the DC
button I wouldn't call it state of the art!  I'd call it BROKEN!

>When you push things to the limit, you have to be a little more careful.
>You can't cut corners as much as you are used to.

Agreed - but the antecedent to your pronoun "you" is COMMODORE, not "the
customer." And if they're putting out products that can't make the grade
under normal use (which was the gist of the original complaint, I believe)
then they deserve to be abandoned.

NOW for the "last paragraph" I mentioned in the first line: on the other
hand, if the problem truly emanates from the insidious copy protection scheme
used, as alleged by another poster, then it is the company using this
protection scheme that deserves to be abandoned, not commodore/amiga. Hey,
how many OTHER (read "normal, high-quality, double-sided, quad density") disks
have had problems like this, anyway?

keith (feel free to comment, flames to /dev/null) ericson